Dixons Carphone to close 134 stores as part of £50m revamp

Dixons Carphone is set to close 134 UK and Ireland shops as it merges its remaining PC World and Currys stores – and adds a Carphone Warehouse area within them.

This means there will be fewer, bigger stores going forwards, each of which will contain three shops in one.

The company said in a statement this morning: "Following the merger, it has become clear to us that customers really like our fully refurburbished 3-in-1 store concept, and we have decided to launch a major programme to roll this format out across the whole market and put the portfolio into its long-term state.

"This will involve merging the remaining PC World and Currys stores and inserting a Carphone Warehouse [section in them]. While this will reduce our store numbers by 134, we have been doing this – on a smaller scale – for some years and are very confident that the impact on sales and colleague numbers will be neutral or better.

"In addition, our experience shows that that colleagues prefer working in – and customers prefer shopping in – our new 3-in-1 format stores."

Dixons Carphone will be spending around £50 million on refitting its stores, and expects to spend £70 million in its 2015/2016 financial year on property exit costs, asset write downs and operational costs associated with the programme.

"Given that the programme will be implemented during FY 2016/17, we anticipate that the benefit to FY 2016/17 earnings will be modest, but thereafter this activity will contribute approximately £20m of incremental annual earnings from recurring costs savings," the firm added in a statement.

As part of its latest trading statement for the ten weeks ending January 9th 2016, Dixons Carphone reported group like-for-like revenues up five per cent with record Black Friday and market share gains in all markets.

It expects to generate profit before tax of £440 million to £450 million for the full year.

The firm says its Sprint store trial in the US has been a success, and hopes to agree on a full joint venture to manage 500 stores. It has also struck a new distribution agreement with TalkTalk in the UK.

Seb James, Group Chief Executive, said: “I am very happy to be reporting a further year of good like-for-like growth over our peak trading period. The two-humped camel shape that emerged last year was further accentuated with an all-time record day on Black Friday and a strong promotional period after Christmas.

"In all territories we saw continued market share gain, especially in UK mobile. Once again, customer satisfaction metrics moved forward year-on-year as did price competitiveness."